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The Times to Cut 100 News Jobs

After years of resisting the newsroom cuts that have hit most of the industry, The New York Times will bow to growing financial strain and eliminate about 100 newsroom jobs this year, the executive editor said Thursday.

The cuts will be achieved “by not filling jobs that go vacant, by offering buyouts, and if necessary by layoffs,” the executive editor, Bill Keller, said. The more people who accept buyouts, he said, “the smaller the prospect of layoffs, but we should brace ourselves for the likelihood that there will be some layoffs.”

He said, “We intend to move quickly, to get any cuts past us so that we do not spend a year bleeding slowly.”

The Times has 1,332 newsroom employees, the largest number in its history; no other American newspaper has more than about 900. There were scattered buyouts and job eliminations in the newsroom in recent years, but the overall number continued to rise, largely from the growth of its Internet operations.

The New York Times Company has made significant cuts in the newsrooms of some of its other properties, including The Boston Globe, as well as in nonnews operations. Executives say the overall headcount is 3.8 percent lower than it was a year ago. But with the industry’s economic picture worsening, the company is under increased pressure from shareholders — notably two hedge funds that recently bought almost 10 percent of the common stock — to do something significant to improve its bottom line.

The Times Company stock, which topped $52 in mid-2002, sank below $15 in January. The interest of the hedge funds has generated a slight rebound. Shares closed at $18.84 Thursday, partly in response to news of the probable layoffs.

For 2007, the Times Company recently reported earnings of $208.7 million on revenue of $3.2 billion. The company’s newspaper segment had an 8 percent operating margin last year, compared with 13 to 22 percent for several other large newspaper publishers. Newspaper industry ad revenue fell about 7 percent last year, and 4.7 percent at the Times Company, hurt by both the slowing economy and the rise of Internet advertising. Executives around the industry have projected that 2008 will be equally bad.

Revenues are falling even as readership of major newspapers climbs sharply because of the Web. Most major papers set records for Internet traffic last month, Nielsen/NetRatings reported Thursday; the Web site of The Times had more than 20 million unique visitors, more than any other newspaper site.

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Other large papers have made much bigger cuts, proportionally, than those The Times is planning; some newsrooms are more than 20 percent smaller than they were early in the decade.

Even so, eliminating jobs at The Times has grown harder “because the low-hanging fruit is gone, and so is some of the higher-hanging fruit,” Mr. Keller said. And he suggested that the cuts could not help but affect the newspaper’s journalism.

“To meet our budget goals, we will have to do a little less, and every time we do less, we cede a bit of advantage,” he said. “Our challenge will be to set our priorities in such a way that we do less in the areas that damage our competitiveness least.”

The Times has a newsroom budget of more than $200 million. It is one of a few news organizations that has not reduced its coverage of Iraq, which costs about $3 million a year. Expenses have also been increased by an unusually long and competitive presidential campaign.

The Times also faces increased competition from The Wall Street Journal, which was acquired in December by the News Corporation. With Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation’s chairman, calling for The Journal to become an alternative to The Times, The Journal is stepping up its coverage of politics and government.

The Journal has about 750 newsroom personnel, a figure that does not include some of the support staff that most newspapers include in the tally. That is the largest the number has ever been, and executives have said they expect it to grow.

The Los Angeles Times has about 870 newsroom employees, down from about 1,200 early in this decade, and recently announced that it would eliminate 40 to 50 newsroom jobs. The Washington Post has about 800, down from a peak of about 900.